Lord Robert May MAE 1936–2020
Former UK Chief Scientist, past President of the Royal Society and Member of Academia Europaea, Lord Robert May, has died, aged 84
Lord May was Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government from 1995 to 2000 and Head of the Office of Science and Technology. He was the President of the Royal Society from 2000 to 2005. An Australian scientist, his fields of scholarship included animal population dynamics, biodiversity and theoretical ecology.
His awards and honours were many. He was knighted for services to science in 1996 and was appointed to the Order of Merit in 2002. Lord May was awarded the Copley Medal in 2007, the Royal Society’s oldest and most prestigious award, for his seminal studies of interactions within and among biological populations that have reshaped our understanding of how species, communities and entire ecosystems respond to natural or human created disturbance.
Lord May held joint professorships at the University of Oxford and Imperial College London. Throughout his career, he also held positions at Harvard University, University of Sydney and Princeton University. Lord May was elected to the Academia Europaea in 1994.
Vice-President of Academia Europaea, Professor Ole Petersen said,
“Bob was a brilliant scientist, scientific advisor and a superb President of the Royal Society. I was on the Royal Society Council during his last period as President and saw him as a forceful, fearless and clear sighted leader.”
Lord May passed away on 28th April, 2020, aged 84. Our deepest sympathies are with his family and friends.